Mary Shanahan New Napier city councillor Deane Jessep today admitted running up thousands of dollars in parking and vehicle compliance fines - and to drip-feeding payments on money he still owes the council.
Having learned the art of budgeting, Cr Jessep said he preferred the instalment approach for paying off
the fines, clocked up over a number of years.
Although some tickets had been issued for over-parking his car, a BMW 740 used in his IT consultancy work, most were for non-registration of vehicles loaned out to friends.
In his "boy racer" past, the 25-year-old said he owned up to nine vehicles at a time, and he still had four in his name. He was a generous person, and essentially kept a fleet to lend vehicles to friends. If they ran up fines in his name, the price of that friendship was that they paid him the amount owing and he then paid the council at the same rate.
With a young family to support, he had not been prepared to front up with a lump sum. The council's parking department had advised him to let the matter go to court for an order to be made on instalment payments.
Cr Jessep said he had been complying with that, paying off the fines at $20-$30 a week. About $800 was outstanding, "but I don't keep a very close eye on it".
He was surprised Hawke's Bay Today had been alerted to the fines because he felt the matter "about as trivial as it can get".
In public life he expected some interest in matters that would ordinarily be considered private, but there were no fines he didn't intend paying off and no debt collector was involved.
